


A Chill In The Air

by MakingPoetry



Series: Winter Dragon Amery [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakingPoetry/pseuds/MakingPoetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which after Amery falls to his death during the Volstovic war against the Ke-Han, his body is recovered by Hydra and successfully revived. He goes on to become the winter dragon and receives training from the winter soldier. However, all is not as Amery thinks it is, and he finds out the hard way that he has no right to his own life. This is his beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Chill In The Air

The very first thing that he remembered was pain, excruciating and overwhelming. He wasn’t entirely sure when he woke up, or what caused him to in the first place. How could he be in so much pain and still be alive? He would have screamed if he could have worked his lungs, would have thrashed if he could have moved, but he didn’t even have the energy to open his eyes, and even if he could, the bright light beyond surely would have blinded him. It felt like he was paralyzed and the most that he could do was twitch his fingers while he listened to the voices around him. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, they seemed to be speaking some sort of foreign language, but they sounded urgent, almost distressed.

Thankfully, he soon sank back into unconsciousness.

~

The second time that he woke up, the pain was a dull throb.

This time he could focus on the people in the room but he still couldn’t understand them. The frustration from this was mutual. He might not understand the words that the doctors were saying, but their body language and tone of voice made it clear enough. One of the bigger problems with this, though, was that _his_ frustration was making them jumpy. It was like they expected him to be a threat, even when his limbs felt like jelly and there was a persistent ache in the back of his skull.

When one of the doctors came towards him with a raised needle, he responded by breaking their arm, as simple as that. Adrenaline was a powerful thing, and if there was one thing that he knew for certain in his muddled mess of a mind, it was that he didn’t like feeling threatened. Whoever these people were, they were a threat. The other doctors responded by wrestling him to the floor to sedate him, finally getting the needle into his arm. It took five of them, even with his weakened condition.

He lost consciousness slower this time, everything blending together in a dizzying blur of lights and colors and sounds that made him feel nauseous before everything sank into darkness.

~

The third time went considerably better in that it didn’t involve breaking bones. He did, however, punch a doctor in the face shortly after waking up and _nearly_ break their jaw. Just to let them all know that he hadn’t forgotten what had happened the last time, of course. Though all his lashing out got him was another needle, and while he expected to sleep again, instead it slowed his mind, made him feel weak and slow. They still strapped him down into a chair, locked his ankles and wrists into place, made sure that he couldn’t twist his way free. Not that he could do anything at the moment beyond feebly pulling at his bonds.

Then they brought in someone that he could actually understand. Someone who spoke the same language as he did, though he wasn’t even sure what that was. They asked him a lot of questions, most of them things that he didn’t have an answer for. He didn’t know his name, or anything about who he was or his life. He couldn’t remember _anything_ before he’d woken up in pain, though he didn’t tell them that, didn’t want to relive the memory. That was alright though, they told him, because they were going to give him a new life.

They’d already set him on the right path, they’d told him. They had saved him, rebuilt him. His spine had been broken and had been carefully reconstructed, using metal instead of anything organic. Repairing the nerve damage had been harder, and though they tried to explain it to him, the things that they had done went over his head. He was simply glad not to be paralyzed. He had had other injuries they had fixed, as well, including the back of his skull and various other broken bones. They had done something that made him stronger, which was why it had taken so many men to wrestle him to the floor even when he’d been in the early stages of recovery. He didn’t understand that process either, but it didn’t stop him from being grateful.

To Hydra, he was loyal.

~

He didn’t remember his name, and they didn’t give him a new one. He had a codename, though, the _Winter Dragon_ , and he supposed that he liked that well enough. He didn’t need a name when there were people to take care of him, people that he could rely on. Whatever he’d been before, he eventually stopped caring. He had been given a purpose, a second chance, and that was all that mattered. Not that he had much time for thoughts such as those; most of his waking hours were spent on language lessons or strength training, helping him become all that he could be, peak physical condition.

Over time, when he was up for it, his training was stepped up and he was passed over to someone else for certain things. Someone who could teach him how to use a gun and knives, a man who also didn’t have a name, who was just called the _Winter Soldier_. He was alright with that; they meant that they were almost the same, that the soldier wouldn’t look down on him like some of the other men did, like he wasn’t as good as they were or something, when he knew for a fact that he could take them down with one hand.

The first time he met the soldier, he thought that the man looked strangely familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on why (hadn’t had a proper look in a mirror, or else he would have known how strong their resemblance was). His grasp on Russian-and English and German-was still shaky at best by that point, but it didn’t seem to be that much of an obstacle for the soldier, when it came to understanding each other, and for that he was grateful. 

In a way, they actually seemed to click, like they had been made from the same mold, and that was a relief to him as well. Things _did_ get easier as their language barrier lessened (he learned more from the soldier, it seemed sometimes, than his actual language teacher), but even without words they seemed to understand each other just fine most of the time. Their working relationship wasn’t always pretty, sometimes they butted heads, _really_ fought, honestly tried to hurt each other, but it never lasted for long.

Sometimes, there was a distant, lost look in the soldier’s eyes, like there was something he was trying to think of, but it was just out of his reach, or like he was somewhere else, far away, and the dragon wondered if he ever got that same look in his eyes. He wanted to ask about it, but though he was loyal to Hydra, and grateful for what they had done, he had quickly discovered that asking too many questions was a terrible idea. Even when it was only him and the soldier, in the middle of the night as they slept-or tried to sleep-he was afraid to ask.

It scared him the first time the soldier woke from a nightmare, and he made the mistake of trying to calm him. His efforts won him the man’s metal fist in his face. The situation escalated so severely, so quickly, that guards arrived within minutes. That was the last that he saw of the soldier for a long time, and when the man finally returned, he seemed to have no idea who the dragon was. This was an unnerving development, to say the least, and this time he had the guts to ask. No matter how hard he pressed, though, he didn’t receive any answers.

He worried that he would be next, that he too would suddenly be turned into a blank thing that didn’t remember the last few months. So he did the only thing that he felt he could. He fled. As he had expected-as a part of him had worried-he didn’t get very far. What he hadn’t expected, though, was that they would send the soldier after him. There was no reasoning with the man, and though the dragon put up a fight, he was no match. In the end, he was dragged back to Hydra, unconscious and battered, with a dark ring of bruises around his neck from the soldier’s metal hand.

~

The first and last thing that he remembered was the cold. They led him from the chair after the pain had faded, when he was aware of where he was again. He felt claustrophobic, but he knew that he wasn’t supposed to fight. That would make them angry, and then there would be more pain. The cold crept up, slow but steady and relentless, all consuming. It was the last thing that he remembered before he slept, a long, dark sleep during which he would not dream, would hardly even exist.


End file.
